"Early History of Thurston County, Washington; Together with Biographies and
Reminiscences of those Identified with Pioneer Days." Compiled and Edited by
Mrs. George E. (Georgiana) Blankenship.  Published in Olympia, Washington, 1914.
p. 189.
 
ALEXANDER YANTIS

     The history of Alex Yantis and his family, while, perhaps, not more filled
with adventure and trials than that of contemporaneous pioneer settlers, is so
characteristic and vivid, as related by the sons and daughters still living,
that their experiences merit a prominent place in this collection of
reminiscences.
     Hailing from Brownsville, Missouri, the Yantis family, consisting of Mr.
and Mrs. Yantis and nine sturdy sons and daughters, joined a train of ox teams
for the overland trip to California. Mr. Yantis was elected captain of the train
and the trip was made without any direct disturbance from the Indians, the
attacks of whom was the emigrants' constant dread and terror all through the
long, hot, dusty journey over the old Oregon Trail. Although the trip was
unavoidably tedious, as the oxen were tired and footsore, still many of the
remembrances of the younger ones of that trainload are pleasant and full of
interest. The big camp fires at night, when all gathered around telling and
listening to tales of home and adventure, the novel experiences each day would
bring forth, the laying by for one day's rest each week to allow the women to
wash the clothes and bake up a supply of bread, while the children played around
the wagons and picked the many-hued flowers which grew by the side of the road.
These were among the simple pleasures which made the trip endurable and
almost enjoyable. The Yantis sons and daughters still tell with glee of the fun
and play of the trip, whenever a family reunion is held. They were a happy
family, with the family ties tender and close to this day, among the children
who survive.
     The nearest to a tragedy encountered was when the Snake River country was
reached. At a certain point in the trail the road diverged and a sign post was
set up by some previous traveller indicating that by following one of the roads
a nearer cut-off would be found, although through a wilder country. One family
decided to take this nearer trail although earnestly remonstrated with by Mr.
Yantis and other men of the train, whose counsel was that all should stick
together. But the man was obstinate and by this time had grown careless of the
danger from Indians, so persisted in following the short trail. The rest of the
party proceeded on to Snake River fort, where there were a small company of
soldiers to protect the emigrants. It was known that the Indians were near and
acting ugly. Indeed, the night before the fort was reached, the emigrants of Mr.
Yantis' party could see a band of the enemy dancing a war dance in a bottom of
land close to the camp. Their horrid yells and vehement brandishing of
their guns and bows filled the whites with terror, which was not abated when an
Indian buck came dashing up to Mr. Yantis' wagon and asked him to sell his
little daughter, Sarah, to him. The Indian offered his horse for the child, and
when refused by the parents, rode off in a rage. The night was spent in anxious
watchfulness, but the Indians evidently concluded that the party was too strong
for them to risk an attack on, so left them unmolested.
     When Snake River fort was reached and it was learned that the two wagons,
whose drivers had taken the short cut, had not arrived, it was known that they
had met with disaster. Mr. Yantis and several men of the train went back over
the trail their friends should have arrived from. Before they reached the wagons
they heard shots and screams. Dashing up, their worst fears were confirmed. The
Indians had raided the wagons, shot and killed the man and his wife, and all the
rest of the party, with the exception of two boys. One of these boys was lying
on his face when the relief party came up, his body shot with a number of Indian
arrows. He was not dead, however, and upon hearing Mr. Yantis' exclamations
of horror over the fate of the rest of the family, called: "Is that you. Uncle
Alex."   The other boy was carried off by the Indians, when they stampeded, upon
hearing the relief  party charging up. The lad was afterwards brought back to
the train by a Nez Perce Indian, another tribe than the one which had committed
the massacre of the rest of the party. With a redskin's customary reticence, the
deliverer refused to give particulars of how he came to have the lad in his
possession.
    Two years before the Yantis family, which is the subject of these
reminiscences, decided to leave their home, a brother of Mr. Yantis, B. P.
Yantis, and sister of these men, Mrs. N. Ostrander. had preceded them, coming to
the Cowlitz country, and a little later Mr. Yantis coming on to Olympia. The
prospects in the undeveloped Northwest looked so good to this advance guard that
they wished their brother's family to come West also and locate near them. Ales
Yantis had written his brother and sister that he intended going to California
that summer, starting at a certain time. B. P. Yantis thought his brother would
miss a golden opportunity if he failed to locate
in this section of the country, so hired a man to ride horseback back along the
trail his brother must come, to intercept him with a letter setting forth the
advantages of Thurston County. The man rode along the trail to where it branched
off and led to California. Learning from other emigrants that the ones sought
for had probably not reached this intersection yet, the courier waited till the
brother's train arrived.
     When Mr. Yantis read his brother's message, a longing to see his kinsfolks
came over him, and as all places in the West were alike to the adventurers, they
decided to come on to Oregon, now Washington.
     After carefully considering the two trails then commonly followed by
emigrant trains, the Natehez Pass, or to The Dalles and on down the Columbia
River, Mr. Yantis decided on the Natehez Pass. With almost incredible hardship
and danger, the cattle were driven through this pass, and the wagons frequently
having to be lowered down declivities with ropes, but, finally the train got out
on the White River plains and so on to the Sound country. Soon after their
arrival on Bush Prairie Mr. Yantis located on 320 acres of fine timber land on
the Skookumchuck, four miles from where Tenino now stands, the eldest son, John
Yantis, residing on this homestead after the death of his father and mother.
     The first home was the typical settlers' log cabin, which  was built during
the winter of 1854. During the building of this cabin, the Yantis family lived
with Wm. and Phillip Northcraft, bachelors, and the nearest neighbors. Soon
after moving into the new house, the entire country was startled by the Indian
outbreak. The stories that came pouring in of homes devastated, men and women
and children killed and general havoc, filled the settlers with alarm. A tract
of land on Grand Mound Prairie was donated and there the men assembled and built
a stockade, or fort, which was known as Fort Henness. This enclosure was twelve
feet high, built of solid lumber and so arranged that each family could have
their little house within the safe precincts. In the center of the enclosure
stood the guard house, where the men who were not on picket, duty would assemble
to warm themselves, swap stories and gossip. At two of the corners were block
houses built with special reference to defense, in the event, of an attack.
These houses were only a few feet square at the base with steps leading to the
upper part. Here the logs were longer and the upper story extended out several
feet. There were port holes through the log wall, to shoot through, and these
houses were of sufficient size to hold all the people in the event of the
natives rushing the stockade.
     The Yantis family lived in this way for a year, Mr. Yantis and his sons
going forth mornings to cultivate their fields, and returning to their cabin in
the enclosure at night.
     While Port Henness was never attacked by the Indians, the elder of the
Yantis brothers are enabled to recall one exciting incident which occurred
during their occupancy of the fort. One day an Indian woman came dashing up on
her cayuse, with her face streaming with blood. She was closely pursued by an
Indian buck, the latter wild with drink. When the fort was reached, the woman
threw herself from her horse and ran into one of the cabins, crawling under the
bed. The Indian, who proved to be her husband, stopped when within the enclosure
and Mr. Yantis stepped up to his pony and demanded to know what was the trouble.
The Indian reached behind him, as Mr. Yantis thought to get a gun, when
the white man pulled him off his horse by the hair of his head. It afterward
transpired that the Indian was reaching for a bottle of whiskey he had in the
holster, with the intention of treating.
     The woman in the meantime made her escape and rode off across the clearing.
When the husband was a little sobered down he started after his wife,
threatening dire acts when he should overtake her. He had not gone far from the
stockade when a shot was heard and, upon the men going out to investigate, the
Indian was found lying beside the trail with a bullet hole in his head. The men
took a wagon box and covered the body until the Indian agent could be notified.
It was commonly reported that the band, of which the dead Indian was a member,
tortured the unfortunate wife to death, as an example to the other squaws of the
tribe never to thwart their lords. It was never known definitely who fired the
shot which made at least one good Indian, but at this late day it is shrewdly
suspected that the man's name could be recalled by the surviving inhabitants of
the fort.
     Before the Indian war Mr. Yantis had accumulated a large band of cattle,
but he was obliged to sell and dispose of nearly all the animals to support his
family during these hard times.
     The wheat which Mr. Yantis raised on his place was taken to the mill in
Tumwater, then a two days' journey over rough, muddy roads, from the home place
on the Skookumchuck. The grain was then ground into flour, paying the miller a
toll of one-eighth for the milling. The farmer was allowed to keep the bran and
shorts.
     With a family of fourteen children to sew for, a number of whom were girls,
it was an eventful day in the Yantis family when the mother had her first sewing
machine, one of those little affairs which are screwed onto the table and run by
hand. The elder girls can not remember when they first learned to knit. Their
mother would spin the yarn and the girls knit mittens and socks, which they had
no trouble in disposing of to the bachelors living on ranches in the vicinity.
Sometimes a pair of hand-made mittens would bring a dollar, and the girls were
enabled to add quite a little to the family finances in this way.
     Mr. Yantis was a member of the legislatures of 1860-63, county commissioner
several terms, and was justice of the peace for his neighborhood for many years,
holding the latter office at the time of his death, which occurred when he
was 72 years of age. The wife and mother, who had endured with unparalleled
cheerfulness and fortitude, trials and vicissitudes enough to appall one less
strong and brave of heart, ceased her labors in the year of 1877.
    The sons and daughters of this branch of the Yantis family were; Margaret,
afterwards Mrs. E. K. Sears;. Ann B., afterwards Mrs. Win. Martin; Mary L.,
afterwards Mrs. John F. Damon, of Seattle; Sarah E., afterwards Mrs. A. Webster.
John L., Katherine T., afterwards Mrs. Jesse Martin; William F.; Alexander M.;
Sophia Belle, now Mrs. L. Willey, of Olympia; Eliza B., afterwards Mrs. S.
Hanaford, of Hanaford Valley; Martha M., afterwards Mrs. N. Gary, of Tenino;
James E.; Virginia T., afterwards Mrs. H. A. Davis, of Centralia, and Fannie
G. James E. and Fanny G. died in infancy.
     The donation claim on the Skookumchuck, started in an unbroken wilderness,
has become one of the finest and most valuable farms in Thurston County. It has
always been owned by a Yantis, Mr. John Yantis succeeding his father as
owner and manager. Here, surrounded by an interesting family of sons and
daughters, in company of his wife, who has done her share towards building up
the home, Mr. Yantis loves to recall once again the strenuous and exciting,
experiences of his boyhood days.

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Submitted to the Washington Bios. Project in July 2007 by Diana Smith.
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.